﻿We paid 3 freelance writers to create content on the exact same topic with the exact same
content brief.
The only difference was in their rates.
And today, with the help of my friends at Ahrefs, we're going to critique the quality
of these articles and see if more expensive writers create better content.
Stay tuned.
[music]
What's up everyone, it's Sam Oh here with Ahrefs and I am pumped to be here
with my friends Josh, head of content at Ahrefs and Patrick, our resident technical
SEO and basically our in-house Wiki for all things SEO.
Let's call him Patrikipedia for the day.
Now, before we get into the content reviews, we need to talk about a) the writers and how
we hired them, and b) how we critiqued their work.
So to find freelance writers, I put up a very simple job post on Problogger Jobs saying
that we were looking for freelance writers to research and write a product review post
for our affiliate site.
For example, "best [product name]."
And within a week, we had 435 applicants to choose from.
Now, because we wanted to compare quality with price, choosing writers was quite simple.
Basically, I chose writers based on their per word rate.
The lowest rate was $0.02/word, the median was $0.15 and the highest was $0.40.
And the only thing I did to vet writers was check that their sample articles had authorship.
Now, each of these writers were tasked to write a post on the "best purple laser pointers."
And in the content brief, they were given some basic guidelines, product recommendations,
and headings.
As for a word count quota, I gave them a pretty wide word count range from 500
to 1,300 words.
And in my opinion this post didn't need to be more than 1,000 words.
So anything near that 1,300 range would tell me that the writer was just padding
the content with words for a higher payout.
Now, onto our rating methodology.
The articles were all blind tested.
And we scored each article on a scale from 0 to 10 based on the attributes of quality content
that I talk about in our video on how to make content that's better than your competitors.
And these attributes include:
Content clarity which is basically readability and flow, content depth, so were they just
summarizing bullet points from Amazon or did they do more research, content usefulness,
meaning, would it help someone make an informed buying decision for a purple laser
pointer, and we skipped over other attributes that they weren't responsible for like presentation.
Instead, I had Josh and Patrick guess who the 2 cent per word,
15 cent per word, and 40 cent per word authors were based on content alone.
Now, obviously, the way we evaluated content is nothing scientific considering we only tested
3 freelance writers from one job board.
Plus, content quality is completely subjective.
So with that said, I think you'll be surprised by our reflections because all of these things
will surface in our discussions.
Now, if you want to actually play along with us, I published all 3 articles and left links in
the description for you.
So feel free to check them out and leave your thoughts on the articles in the comments.
Alright, so let's get started with the 2 cent per word writer.
This writer had written for some lower quality affiliate sites and the majority of their writing
portfolio was actually for Income Store.
You know… that alleged Ponzi scheme.
Their final draft came in at 1,596 words for a total payment of $31.92 – 296 words more
than the maximum range.
And in terms of turnaround, they submitted their final draft within 1 day of getting
the content brief.
Now, as for clarity, depth, and usefulness, here are the scores on a scale from 0 - 10
as well as our personal rankings – 1 representing our favorite writer
and 3 being our least favorite.
Now, as you can see, Patrick and I agreed that this was the worst article of the 3.
But it was actually Josh's favorite.
And considering he's probably the pickiest of us all when it comes to choosing and rating
writers, I was pretty surprised.
Listen to what he had to say about this article.
This article was probably my favorite one of the three.
Simply because I think it was the most skimmable.
Like, you can just... under each of those subheadings the writer's just literally written
the best one for each of those purposes.
You don't have to dig for that information; it's just there, it's in bold.
So, although there was quite a bit of fluff in other parts of the article, I felt that at least
if you could trust the website that it was on, you get your answer pretty quickly.
So I think it was quite well written, it was a bit repetitive and fluffy in places, like the intro was
just a ramble that's not necessary and same with the conclusion, it was just kind of fluff.
But on the whole, like, I'd say it's the best one, probably, out of all three.
Now, Patrick on the other hand gave this person a medium rating, meaning there was both good
and bad.
Here's what he had to say on the good.
I think this one had probably the most in-depth content of all the articles.
They seem to take a little more time to kind of understand the ask.
One particular thing that I liked was the section about cats.
They actually warned people don't use the purple laser pointer for cats.
And the other 2 articles they like, they didn't mention that.
They all use the same, I think 7-in-1 laser pointer and the others are like "Just use it,"
and this one specifically said "Don't use the purple one with pets."
And then there were also some not so great things.
Again, this one was really useful but there were tons and tons of errors.
I think it's pretty obvious that this was not a native English speaker which not to say
that's bad but they're level of English proficiency isn't what I would want to use
in an article targeting English-language content.
And they made some pretty egregious errors too, I think.
One of the products is this purple, blue laser pointer, they just completely left our "purple"
which is the target of the article.
So, like, they completely misnamed the product.
For me, it felt like the writer had created a bullet list of points they wanted to cover, and they just
converted them into sentences, and then stitched them alltogether.
So for me, it was a flow killer and I actually had a very hard time reading it.
Now, given this writer only cost 2 cents per word, I asked Josh and Patrick if they would hire them
again to write content for their site.
Patrick was a bit torn.
Here's what he had to say:
This one's iffy.
Again, because of all the errors I think I would also have... if I did buy their content, I would also
have to buy, like, an editor or someone to clean up their content.
And Josh gave us a classic Josh answer.
Probably, yeah.
And for me, it's a hard pass seeing as I had an awful time reading this piece
and we were actually the ones paying for it.
Alright, let's move on to the next writer.
This person charged $0.15/word and had written for reputable hosting and technology companies.
And all three sample articles that they submitted were reviews and comparisons which is the same
type of content we wanted.
Their article came in at 952 words for a total payment of $142.80.
As for turnaround, this person submitted their final article within 4 days of receiving
the content brief.
Now, as for clarity, depth, and usefulness, here are our ratings and rankings.
Again, quite mixed.
I gave the writer top scores across all categories and despite what the other
guys thought, I stand by my ratings.
Yes, the writer summarized some points from product pages, but to be fair, there
wasn't much information available online beyond these product descriptions.
And in my opinion, it was a super easy read and useful enough to help someone make
a purchasing decision.
Plus, I'd say that they went above and beyond in their safety guidelines research.
For example, they referenced a specific section of the FDA's guidelines
and summarized it into one sentence.
Now, for Josh, he gave the categories the same score - 5s across the board.
But it was actually his least favorite article.
Here's what he had to say:
The intro just didn't make sense because it just talked about laser pointers becoming
popular, like, if you're hitting this page about the best laser pointers you already know that
popular because you want one.
And then, under each section - this is kind of repeated, this fluffy kind of vibe.
Like, for example, under the best military laser pointer point, you know, there's a whole paragraph
there starting out and it's just talking about that they're typically used in hostile environments and
that they're rugged devices.
You know, you know all this stuff if that's what you're after.
This is not useful, it's not telling you which is the best one or any useful information.
So there's a lot of fluff in this article.
As for Patrick, he was kind of neutral on this article too.
Here's what he said about the good.
In the best part of this one was they put in some stuff from people's reviews.
They actually took the time to read through the reviews and put of your items on.
As for the bad, he had similar thoughts as Josh.
They had a lot more errors and it was a lot more wordy in that they kind of restated the same thing
a few times or just kind of added additional words that didn't really need to be included.
So would we rehire this writer for more content?
Well, for me, it's a definite yes.
If I had an affiliate site to work on today, I'd give them as many product reviews
as they can write.
Let's hear from Patrick.
This writer was definitely worth it.
It's not the best content but it's also not super-expensive.
And now Josh's thoughts:
Ah, no.
A man of few words.
Alright on to the final writer.
This person charged $0.40/word and had written affiliate posts for some big media
publications like Business Insider.
The article came in at 837 words for a total payment of $334.80.
As for turnaround, it took 6 days from them receiving the content brief to get
the final article back to us.
And here are our ratings and rankings for the different categories.
This was actually Patrick's favorite article of the 3 so I'll let him kick things off with
strengths and weaknesses of the post.
I thought that one was probably the best written out of all of them.
As far as it was very clean, they wasn't kind of wordy or run on or anything,
Just a few small mistakes, as far as like grammar, spacing.
I think you've probably read a lot, like, just product descriptions though.
Now, again, Josh gave this article 5s across the board but liked it less than the 2 cent article.
And it was mostly because of this:
So, yeah, although I think it goes into some detail about the actual features of the laser
pointer, it seems to disintegrate into kind of burying a lot of information, and lacking
depth as you go through the article.
So specifically the points about why choose a purple laser pointer...
There's really only one decent point in there which is that they have higher intensity and
higher ignitability, whatever that means.
But it's just buried in this point about, you know, the fact that purple lasers emit purple light which
is obvious, and the fact that purple lasers are for sale online.
So there's no depth there really apart from one little point.
It's the same thing on the safety regulations section: it doesn't really go into depth and tell
you specifics, so there's no useful information there.
You're just kind of reading words and never getting to the information that
you actually came here for.
As for me, it was pretty clear that the 40 cent writer was the best technical writer
just as Patrick had said.
They kept their thoughts concise but as Josh mentioned, the article lacked depth
and the few important points that should have been highlighted, were actually buried
with unhelpful information.
So with that said, would we rehire this writer for more content?
For me, it's most likely a no.
The 15 cent writer in my opinion was much better value and I've worked with people at much lower
rates who I think are just as good at writing but are better with structure and flow.
Let's hear from Patrick:
Maybe, again, I think would I pay for that depends on the market that I'm targeting,
and certain things absolutely this writer would fit.
I don't think I would make enough out of purple laser pointers of an article like this
to justify the cost.
And finally, Josh:
Now, an interesting observation which I'm pretty sure you caught is that the higher
the rate, the shorter the article.
And I think it goes to show that higher paid writers with the experience to back their
rates are less likely to stuff words to maximize their payout.
So overall, are more expensive freelance writers better than cheaper ones?
The obvious answer is no.
Content quality is way too subjective to one's style.
In fact, we all chose different articles as our favorites.
And I think a large part of that is because we went into our evaluations with different
experiences and mindsets.
For example, Josh handles the blog at Ahrefs which has a very intense review process.
And because we actually spend more time shortening articles, he has zero
tolerance for fluff.
So he couldn't get behind any of these articles, which is why he gave them all
just fives across the board.
Because in his words:
These are just your basic articles, like, just some words about laser pointers
there's no actually, like, output anyway.
Whereas I came in with a mindset of "we're hiring freelance writers for
a typical affiliate site" – basically, a much lower standard than Ahrefs blog.
As for Patrick, he kind of came in with a bit of a hybrid mindset.
He knew the content wasn't great, but it was good enough to rank.
Here's what he said:
Any of the content from any of these writers would be okay for an affiliate site,
a typical affiliate site.
It all was pretty useful. They all had...
I don't know if you chose the products or they did.
But, you know, maybe not the best written things ever but I see no reason why these
pages wouldn't make money for many of them.
It all seem to be okay and useful for the people.
So I'll leave you with 2 takeaways and 1 actionable use case.
Takeaway #1. Set specific criteria to judge freelance writers like we did on clarity, depth,
and usefulness, which again, I talk about more about one of our videos on content creation.
This way, you can grade each person's work fairly.
And if a writer checks off all the boxes consistently, chances are, you're going
to be happy with their work when they write for you.
And takeaway #2. Don't let a freelancer's rate subconsciously affect your expectations
on quality.
Instead, find writers whose content you genuinely like and would love to have on
your site.
And you don't need to limit yourself to job postings.
Instead, you can actively go after writers from blogs you enjoy reading and try to hire them.
A quick tip to do this is to use Ahrefs' Content Explorer.
Just search for site: and a website that you enjoy reading.
Then head on over to the authors tab.
From here, you can click on the page numbers to see their articles and cherry pick the best
authors based on your set criteria.
Plus, you'll be able to see how much traffic their articles generate and the average number
of referring domains they attract.
Then it's just a matter of sending them an email to ask if they do freelance writing
and many will.
Bottomline: if your goal is to create great content, don't let a few pennies
be the determining factor in hiring freelance writers.
Let their work speak for itself.